on Akaya: three propositions
by readerofasaph
Summary: A short fic exploring a possible future for Kirihara Akaya, and his relationship with tennis.


i. **That like 87.5 of Rikkai, he will never, ever get over his captain.**

By the time he is eighteen, Akaya practices against an imaginary Yukimura everyday. It's a habit that begins sometime during third year of junior high and consolidates three years later when he walks on for the the semifinals of the Under-19 Japan Open, a well-worn nSix-One 95 racquet resting on his shoulder, and inexplicably pulls off a 6-3, 7-5, 6-4 win against Sanada Genichirou.

The approval, in Sanada's eyes, is blatant when they shake hands at the net, and Akaya feels like the worst _kouhai_ in the world, even if Sanada is one of the three people who can be counted on to lose to Akaya and be genuinely, in some way, happy (the second is Yanagi-sempai. The third is, surprisingly or unsurprisingly, depending on how well-acquainted you are with the situation, Tachibana Kippei).

By this point Akaya is even old enough, well enough into his adolescence, to comprehend the psychological chaos that this match wreaks upon his mind – uprooted goalposts, exploding slivers of shattered idols, dissipating mirages – but not quite mature enough to move beyond the learned coping mechanisms of violence, obsession, and compulsive tennis playing. (Later, alcohol will come and go; friends of many kinds – Akaya will never stop having friends despite an a badly ingrained habit of entitlement and an even worse one of neglect; women; game consoles; and, intermittently, healthier practices of meditation, reading, and karate.) Six years of only wanting one thing carves well-worn paths in a tennis player's mind, and the only replacement for the Yukimura who will never be is, well, the Yukimura who will never be. So Akaya plays against him. It's been eighteen months since the last time the real Yukimura touched a racquet and two years since he could give Akaya a decent match, so there is less and less data to extrapolate from with each passing fortnight – even Niou cannot, these days, predict what Yukimura's tennis would look like if he could play tennis – but Akaya's imagination stretches to bridge the gap, creates the returns, the smashes, the tactical superiority, all the conditions it would take to bring Akaya to his knees and gasping, eyes bloodshot, helpless, hopeless, burning with new ambition.

(If Fuji Syuusuke had not quit playing, if Tezuka Kunimitsu had ever come back to Japan, well then, perhaps Akaya's creativity would be less fertile than it is now. But a little escapism never hurt any tennis player. It may even be a prerequisite.)

ii. **That tennis itself will always be enough for him.**

Tezuka is too talented to end up as a mere tennis player.

Akaya doesn't think of that, of course, it's probably Marui who says it, or Niou; the thought probably occurred to Yanagi at least once but he'd never have given voice to it, uneasily aware that the statement could be applied just as easily to himself, or Yukimura, or Sanada when it comes down to it. The potential aspersions it casts on Akaya's intelligence, giftedness, charisma, and overall employment prospects would have provided powerful secondary, though unfounded, motivation to remain silent. Akaya doesn't know what a _mere_ tennis player is. Neither, it seems, does Tezuka Kunimitsu, reading History at Cambridge, one of five Asians on _People_'s Most Beautiful People list, 96th on the ATP rankings and stuck there for months, much to the dismay of the Japanese press.

They meet each other for the first time in five years during the second round of a qualifier in Copenhagen. Akaya loses badly, and then extorts a promise from the older man to meet up for dinner, the relief of being able to speak in Japanese drowning out both the bitterness of past defeats and the dismay of the present one. They end up drinking malt whisky and Diet Coke in a bar in Nørrebro, loaded with Art Tatum recordings and attractive blond strangers,. Akaya tries to offer Tezuka alcohol, and Tezuka, with systematic courtesy, enquires after Akaya's family, career plans, hobbies, and finally, with something resembling emotional interest, his former teammates.

After six standard drinks, this subject is uncontrollably, unbearably _sad_, and Akaya has always been a talkative drunk, even when his listener is an unresponsive, intimidatingly good-looking rival player who has just beaten him 6-1-, 6-3, 6-1 this morning. By midnight, when he's leaning against a railing throwing up half-digested curry into a lake filled with neon reflections, Akaya has cursed Sanada-_fukubuchou_ in Japanese, ungrammatical English and newly-acquired Danish, while admitting that he wouldn't be a quarter of the man or tennis player he is without Sanada's influence; he's mourned Yukimura all over again, barely retaining enough presence of mind to avoid details that Tezuka does not already know and which Yukimura would not want Tezuka to know; he's even come close to voicing that vague resentment that he sometimes feels, at all the people who taught him to love tennis and then moved on, leaving him with nothing but the love itself. That's just how dangerous Tezuka's taciturn silence is.

His stomach cramps painfully. Tezuka says, "Fuji," and Akaya, who in junior high could always be counted on to ruin a moment if there was a moment there to be ruined, understands everything for a split second, understands that he is understood.

Ten months later, Echizen wins Wimbledon, and Akaya image-trains with Yukimura for the final time.

iii. **That he is young, and most of his story still untold.**

He's never that good, to be honest; the odds were stacked against him from the beginning, ethnically, genetically, in ways Yanagi could explain with painstaking precision but Akaya doesn't even think worth thinking about. Yanagi-sempai, Yukimura-sempai, even Sanada-sempai, they always talked too much about limits in the end. So many things in their heads, and all ostensibly to do with tennis but really they were just distractions.

(Maybe Yukimura would have understood. Could have understood. But Akaya hates what-ifs and on some level Yukimura will always be a source of sorrow left better untouched.)

So he keeps playing. He achieves several historical firsts (Tezuka achieves more) for a Japanese player. He learns how to deal with losing, and how to win again after losing. He wins often enough that he could potentially do this for the rest of his life, if he wanted to. He has not thought that far ahead yet, about what he wants to accomplish with the time unfolding ahead of him. Echizen Ryoma is out there like some low-lying star, close enough to earth to touch, but Akaya is wary of long-term goals. He is not ready to think about the future. He is not the kind to pick up scars easily, but he remembers, nonetheless, the lessons of the past.


End file.
